Paratextual Chaucerianism: Naturalizing French Texts in Early Printed Verse

Abstract

After the work of Alice Miskimin and Seth Lerer, and after essays in collections edited by Thomas Prendergast and Barbara Kline, Paul Ruggiers, and Theresa Krier, we understand much better Chaucer's strong and flexible reach into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Jackson Boswell's and Sylvia Holton's forthcoming Chaucer's Fame in England: 1475-1640 promises still further specificity about the literary reception of "our mayster father" into the seventeenth century. 1 Most of this scholarship treats imitations of Chaucer's works, allusions to Chaucer and/or his works, or imprints, editions, and reissues of his works. In the course of studying early printed verse translations from French, I have come across a different aspect of Chaucer's importance to the age of early print: an identifiable, shaping Chaucerianism (more precisely, a post-Chaucerianism 2) in the paratexts to one of these translations. By paratexts, I mean what Gérard Genette means in Les Seuils: the "thresholds" that introduce the work to the reader, that frame and present it. 3 From a Jaussian standpoint, paratexts help condition readers' horizons of expectation for the particular work as an exemplar of its genre, and thus for its tone, imagery, and nuance. From a more practical view, the paratexts, like contemporary blurbs or jacket copy, enhance the marketing and advertisement of an unfamiliar book. Paratexts are thus an extremely useful site for printers and translators working in a new medium and for literary historians. In the course of "Englishing" foreign texts, some printers and translators invoke Chaucer's literary authority, general style, particular topoi, and even phrasing. These are not idle flourishes; Chaucerianism becomes an important resource for the printers and translators. In an era when almost half of English printed verse was translated, 4 paratextual Chaucerianism is a special strategy of appropriation and naturalization of the foreign.